MUELLER SAYS FBI USES DRONES IN U.S.

Director suggests guidelines needed as their use grows

FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged Wednesday that the bureau has used drones for surveillance in the United States and suggested that government needs to develop guidelines as their use grows.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mueller said the bureau has employed drones in “a very, very minimal way and very seldom.”

“I will tell you that our footprint is very small,” he said, responding to a question by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. “We have very few and have limited use, and we’re exploring not only the use but also the necessary guidelines for that use.

“We already have, to a certain extent, a body of law that relates to aerial surveillance and privacy relating to helicopters and small aircraft ... which could well be adapted to the use of drones,” Mueller said. “It’s still in its nascent stages ... but it’s worthy of debate and perhaps legislation down the road.”

Mueller’s comments come amid a growing public debate over privacy and civil liberties spurred by the recent revelation of the National Security Agency’s massive telephone and Internet surveillance program.

“I think it’s something that the FBI has started to use these drones without any clear policy to protect our privacy,” Calabrese said. “Now we have cheap, easily accessible technology to allow law enforcement to spy on us. Law enforcement should only use these drones if they have probable cause.”

“If people are concerned about privacy, I think the greatest threat to privacy of Americans is the drone and the use of the drone, and the very few guidelines that are on it today and the booming industry of commercial drones,” she said.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, told Mueller that “these drones can be very, very tiny but store a lot of data.”

In March, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., waged a 13-hour filibuster railing against CIA Director John Brennan’s nomination in which he warned of increasing government use of aerial drones on U.S. soil.

After his filibuster ended, Paul received a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder stating that President Barack Obama doesn’t have the power to “use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil.”

The FBI said in a statement following Mueller’s comments at the Senate hearing that drones “allow us to learn critical information that otherwise would be difficult to obtain without introducing serious risk to law enforcement personnel.”

The FBI used drones at night during a six-day hostage standoff in Alabama earlier this year. The standoff ended when members of an FBI rescue team stormed an underground bunker, killing gunman Jimmy Lee Dykes before he could harm a 5-year-old boy held hostage.

The FBI said its unmanned aerial vehicles are used only to conduct surveillance operations on stationary subjects. In each instance, the FBI first must obtain the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration to use the aircraft in a very confined geographic area.

The aerospace industry forecasts a worldwide deployment of almost 30,000 drones by 2018, with the United States accounting for half of them.